WEEK 146: IT'S LIKE THIS


Having a goldfish as a pet makes about as much sense as having a nun as a girlfriend.

Watching the Super Bowl on a 1-inch Sony makes about as much sense as reading The Washington Post through a pair of binoculars.

Lugging around a boom box the size of a coffee table makes about as much sense as playing a grand piano in a marching band.

We came up with This Week's Contest the other day while leafing through our dog-eared copy of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" (f1) and thought it would be a good idea to borrow (f2) from one of his precepts (f3) for Week 146. Your challenge is to produce an A and a B to complete the expression, "A makes about as much sense as B." First-prize winner gets a hideously realistic slice of plastic cheesecake above which hovers a spoon, suspended by a hideously realistic cascading pillar of congealed red cheesecake topping, a value of $ 20.

Runners-up, as always, get the coveted Style Invitational losers' T-shirts, now, at last, in shocking yellow. Honorable mentions get the mildly sought-after Style Invitational bumper stickers. Winners will be selected on the basis of humor and originality. Mail your entries to the Style Invitational, Week 146, The Washington Post, 1150 15th St. NW, Washington, D.C. 20071, fax them to 202-334-4312 or submit them via the Internet to this address: losersaccess.digex.net. Internet users: Please indicate the appropriate Week Number in the "subject" field. Entries must be received on or before Monday, Dec. 7. Please include your address and phone number. Winners will be announced in three weeks. Editors reserve the right to alter entries for taste, appropriateness or humor. No purchase necessary. The Faerie of the Fine Print & the Ear No One Reads wishes to thank Stephen Dudzik of Silver Spring for today's Ear No One Reads. Footnotes from above: (f1) Actually, Mad magazine. (f2) Actually, steal outright. (f3) Actually, the entire concept, lock stock and barrel; if it were any more stolen, you'd have to buy it on the street from a guy in a trench coat. Employees of The Washington Post and their immediate families are not eligible for prizes.

Report from Week 143, in which you were asked to rewrite ad jingles or sitcom themes as they might have been wrought by famous writers.

Second Runner-Up

If Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the theme to "The Brady Bunch":
... Through marriage a fam'ly was yborne
And stuft were their lives alway with corne.
This is how the Brady Bunch was mayde
(And Alice was by Ann B. Davis playde.)

(David Hertzig, Alexandria)

First Runner-up

If Dr. Seuss wrote "The Beverly Hillbillies" theme:
His family was hungry
So all Jed could do
Was hunt hunt hunt hunt
All the long, long day through.

And then
Something went POP!
How that pop made Jed stop!
He looked!
And he saw it,right there in the soil.
He looked!
And he saw, in the soil it was oil!

Look at me!
Look at me!
Look at me NOW!
It's fun to be rich
But you have to know how.

And all of Jed's aunts
And all of Jed's uncles
Jed's twice-removed cousins
And second kerplunkles,
Said, "Jed, you must move,
You must move very far."

So they packed, packed, packed, packed
This and that in their car.
They passed purple pools,
And some oddly shaped poodles
Movie stars' homes
And imported foodoodles.

They found a fun place
To set up their stills.
They set up their stills
In Beverly Hills.
Please come again,
We like you a lot!
At the very same time
To the very same spot.

(Art Grinath, Takoma Park)

And the winner of the life-size George Bush cutout:

If Edgar Allan Poe wrote the Alka-Seltzer theme:

At the banquet, I, unswerving, swallowed serving after serving,
Though the food was undeserving, and unnerving were my hosts;
Now I wrestle with the question of impending indigestion
And my stomach burbles blindly with the groans of gastric ghosts.
Dare I seek the only hope that reaches deep as my despair?
Still, my vicious predilection to a chemical addiction
Is as trivial as fiction with this torture to compare.
And my soul sighs for the solace that indubitably is --
In the plop, plop, plop, plop
Plop, plop, plop
And the fizz, fizz, fizz, fizz fizz.

(David Smith, Greenbelt)

Honorable Mentions:

If Geoffrey Chaucer wrote the theme to "The Beverly Hillbillies":

The Hillbillie's Tale

A man there was, and he yclept Jed;
Noble, worthy, poor but contented.
Whylom that he ychesen sustinaunce,
Became a man of crude (f1) sufficaunce.
Goon, saith kindred, to Californie,
So ywente for dwellen in the towne of Beverlie. (f2)

(f1) Oil, see also "black gold," Texas tea.

(f2) Hills, i.e. swimming pools, movie stars; a mythical land.

(Steve Daly, Reston)

If M.C. Hammer wrote"The Flintstones" theme:

Yo, Flintstones
Talkin' Flintstones
Home boys from Bedrock,
Mess with them you history.

(Russell Beland, Springfield)

If Harvey Fierstein wrote the Marine Corps jingle:
We're looking for a few fabulous men.

(Jerry Pannullo, Chevy Chase)

If William Faulkner wrote"The Beverly Hillbillies" theme:

Let me tell you about the story of a man named Jed, just a poor mountaineer trying to keep his family fed. But before the story there was the name, not Sutphen or Compson or Satoris, but Clampett, the two syllables clashing against each other like the jaws of a mule, inert and immovable, lashed by a mute, incestuous fate -- the same hungry force that drilled Jed's wayward bullet deep into Yoknapatawpha County's first (and only) oil well, propelling bubbling crude upward from the ground like the sulfurous spew of some alien industrial race, dreaming of black gold and Texas tea. Peering grimly at the outraged earth, Jed saw himself abruptly a millionaire, heard the languorous, compelling voices of his kinfolk, bare toes intruding in the dust as they urged him to move away from there, to forsake his silent, eroded fields for the lush and monstrous pleasures of Beverly Hills. With cold, furious indignant eyes, he saw the loaded truck, creaking under the weight of Granny's endless rocking, while in the back Jethro bellowed joylessly for his lost, unremembered childhood and Elly Mae stretched out her pale, half-naked body, reeking of doom and a faint odor of verbena. "California," Jed whispered, amazed by the utter certainty of his own voice. "That's the place we oughta be."

(Bill Montague, Alexandria)

If the Unabomber wrote the"60 Minutes" theme:

Tick tick tick tick tick tick tick tick Ba-BOOOM.

(Robin D. Grove, Washington)

If Stephen King wrote The Washington Post jingle:

If you don't get it, it will get you.

(Joseph Romm, Washington)

If Miss Manners wrote "The Jetsons" theme:

May I introduce Jane and George Jetson

and their children, Judy and Elroy?

(Sarah Worcester, Bowie)

And last:

If Quentin Tarantino wrote the theme to "The Brady Bunch":

JULES: So I heard this story, right?
VINCENT: About Amsterdam?
JULES: No, man, I told you about that. I mean this lady. Very fine.
VINCENT: Go on.
JULES: See, she had three girls. All blond like her. Pure vanilla, you dig? And the youngest one, her hair was so curly, Tito got his hand caught in it once. Poor [expletive] was stuck there for three days. Had to drink his own urine to stay alive...

(Justin Warner, Washington)

Next Week: Just Rebus Alone